SkyCode Horoscopes for May 7-May 13, 2018

"Temperance" from the Shadowscapes Deck that I use, created by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law.

Horoscopes to unlock the stars, not to be locked down by them.

“Expecting More vs. Over-expecting”

“Temperance” from the Shadowscapes Deck that I use, created by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law.

We’ve likely all had days or weeks when we’ve tried to set the bar higher for ourselves by doing more. Perhaps you shoot to write 1,000 words in a day for your novel. Or to get to the gym an hour earlier for a longer workout. Yet, instead we don’t end up writing ANY words for our novel THAT WEEK or get to the gym at all. Then we perhaps feel shame instead of pride.

What can we do about moments like that? How can we get better about knowing whether we’re expecting more from ourselves? Or only over-expecting?

On Tuesday, “Go Big or Go Home” Jupiter has his annual face-off by opposition with the energetic Sun. This planetary phase is made to pose such questions. This year, as the Sun sets in the west, you’ll see Jupiter rising in the east. It’s only right that we become expectant and hopeful. But, as a friend loves to remind me, “Hope is not a strategy.”

Finding the right mix

The bad news here is that I don’t believe there’s a way to get around over-expecting completely without curbing too much of your enthusiasm. Or stunting your impulse to go bigger. Yet, there is a way to become better at over-expecting. No, it doesn’t start with being realistic, because you can’t always know what that is as you’re trying to push yourself. And we all need to push ourselves at various times.

Like any heavenly opposition, you have to start within before you put too much energy on who and what’s out there challenging you. Where are your goals coming from? Are they coming from a need to hurry your success? From a fear of failure or embarrassment? If you’re rushing, then you might not have enough grounding or readiness to best ensure your success and growth.

Once you’ve clarified your motivation, reflect on previous or current attempts. If you’ve been writing your novel at about 500 words a day, then pushing to do twice that immediately is likely not the best goal. What if you shoot to increase your output by 25% (125 words)? Or by 50% (250 words)? If you don’t make it to the higher goal, you still would’ve expanded, even if it’s at 15% (75 words). Yet, you still have set a new precedent or personal best. Sans the shame. From there, you can keep doing more until you reach a comfortable stride. Then perhaps at the annual Jupiter-Sun conjunction in late November, you can renew the process.

Mercury to the rescue

But we don’t have to wait another six months until the Jupiter-Sun conjunction. Mercury’s quite busy this weekend. He squares off with ever-edgy Mars on Saturday. Then he caroms inventive Uranus before he finally plants himself in grounded Taurus on Sunday morning. This suggests another strategy.

While pushing new boundaries, we might also need to set new ones. The Mercury-Mars combo indicates we might need to trim away activities or conversations that prove too draining or distracting. You must prioritize. Then the Mercury-Uranus match-up bodes well for sparking our creative genius without the noise that might be drowning it out. We can come up with new ideas and work-arounds for getting ish done. We can feel more on firmer and newer ground, like Mercury taking the cool earth of Taurus to quell the Aries fire he’s been burning for over two months. He gives us hope that progress can be made, eventually.

How to read and use these affirmations

You could choose to read these only for “your sign.” Perhaps that might be your Sun, Moon, or ascendant sign, if you’re familiar with those terms and your chart. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that, though.

I would skim through them all and see which affirmation affirms your life this week:

Pay careful attention to the affirmation(s) that you resist. You probably need to meditate on and say those aloud often.

These affirmations are written for this week, but many of them might speak to you for longer, even a lifetime.

You might not know at the top of the week what you need to affirm. But you might have a sense from the previous week, from a dream or something that happens right on Monday morning. You can also visit this page later in the week to see what resonates. You might also discover I write more for another planet or sign in your chart. I talk more about this here.

My desire is to prompt you to read more for your whole chart, not just what you know or understand your birth chart to be. It’s also possible that none of what I write here speaks to you, and that’s okay. The goal is to open and to explore. That’s the only way we ever truly know anything.